Chapter 23: A Promise to the Stars
…
Satchel and lantern fell from unfeeling fingers.
A wild cry rose, and Grimmjow did not recognize it as his own. He flew across the distance in an instant, Pantera drawn with Shirosaki's throat promised for its cutting edge.
The white demon—vile devil, traitorous scum—clutched Ichigo close to his chest and closed his eyes with a deep crease in his brow before laying the god into the grass.
Grimmjow lunged at him. He could not think, he could not speak; his mind splintered beneath the strain of madness. Pantera cried in echoed grief as the blade reached for Shirosaki.
Shirosaki caught the blade in his palm, and it did not cut. Grimmjow screamed. His arms trembled; his knees buckled, made feeble with fury and futility. How dare he? Grimmjow wrenched his sword back, and Shirosaki released it willingly. He swung again, aim clumsy, and the white demon stepped aside Pantera's reach.
Coward! Traitor! How dare he raise a hand to his own master!
Grimmjow advanced; Shirosaki turned to him, shoulders bent as though beneath a mountain's weight, eyes dark and face stricken.
It was maddening. What right had he to look at Grimmjow so, like one bereaved? What right had he—
"Grimmjow."
Shirosaki's gaze shifted to the ground behind them, and like the moon-pulled tide, Grimmjow followed.
Ichigo lay in the grass with arm outstretched and fingers curled towards Grimmjow.
Grimmjow choked. His fingers forgot their strength; his heart abandoned vengeance. He pushed Shirosaki aside and took a leaden step towards Ichigo and then another. At the final moment his knees buckled, and he fell to kneel.
Hot blood soaked through his trousers. He grasped the collar of Ichigo's robes, hands shaking like a wind-tossed leaf, and pulled them back.
The wound in Ichigo's chest lay just a palm's breadth from the one Aizen had given him, and blood pooled wider with every beat of his heart. Grimmjow's fingers fumbled graceless as he pulled off his own tunic and pressed it to the wound. Ichigo shuddered.
Impaled again—why? Ichigo had scarcely healed from near death—and now, again—
This could not be. He was caught in a nightmare. He had fallen asleep with Ichigo again, had he not? He would wake and find Ichigo beside him—asleep, content, and well.
The copper tang in his nostrils and the blood beneath his palms did not feel like a dream.
"Do not blame Zangetsu."
Grimmjow raised his head. "What—"
"The blame—is not his." The labor of Ichigo's words inspired pity. His fingers found Grimmjow's wrist and curled vise-like around it as though to stay his hand. His face was ashen. "You—will not—touch him."
Grief curled a noose around Grimmjow's throat. He took a shuddering, furious breath. Not Shirosaki's fault? Ichigo would waste his dying breath defending this treacherous snake?
But he would not argue. He could not.
The bleeding did not staunch. Grimmjow's shirt soaked through and still more blood came—unending, as relentless as his regrets. He kept one hand pressed upon the wound and tried to gather Ichigo into his arms with the other. "I will—" He swallowed around the stone in his throat. "I will take you to the healer. He can…"
The village healer had saved Ichigo once from the precipice of certain death. Surely, he could—
"No."
Grimmjow's eyes turned from the terrible wound to his god's face. Ichigo looked so tired. His mouth spilled more blood than words.
"I will—not recover. Not…from this."
Grimmjow shook his head and denied. "You are not thinking clearly." His voice was hoarse. His hands shook. "Be still and be quiet. I am not ready—"
He choked. He was not ready. There was still much he wished for: to relish a peaceful winter with Ichigo in his house, to welcome the first thaw of spring, to celebrate Raahl together once more. He wished—he wished—
His breath caught like a netted bird and broke.
A touch to his arm stirred him from his stupor. Ichigo's lips glistened red—how Grimmjow wished it was only the stain of berries—and his eyes were soft for Grimmjow, for the pain in his face and in his heart.
Even now, even like this, Ichigo cared more for Grimmjow than himself. The warlord laughed, and the sound tasted bitter like unripe persimmon. Was this not the very cause for Ichigo's present state? He cared too much for Grimmjow, for this world of faithless men—where was his selfishness? Where was his duty to himself, to his own life and will?
"Fool," he whispered, yet the word lacked ardor. "You—you knew—"
Ichigo had known this would happen from the moment he sent Grimmjow for their dinner.
No.
He had known even before then. How long? How long had he allowed Grimmjow this happiness, knowing it would not last? How long had he foreseen the breaking of Grimmjow's heart?
Ichigo folded Grimmjow's hand in his, and they were blood-slick both. "Forgive me." His smile ached ephemeral. "It was…but a happy dream."
Grimmjow held him. His hands were without strength. He knelt, stricken and stripped of all power to nudge the course of this terrible night. Never had he felt so small.
A happy dream.
So it was.
Shirosaki knelt opposite him with back broken like that of an old man. His long white hair trailed in the wind like a ghost.
Grimmjow had not the strength to chase him away.
The sky was without clouds.
No doubt the stars were lovely tonight. Grimmjow could not bear to look upon them. Later he could hate them, but at present, the throbbing ache in his chest left room for little else. He stared ahead, but his sight blurred and he saw nothing. He felt as though very far away, taken from his body and mind both.
The night was short; the night was long.
Ichigo pressed something into his hand. Grimmjow opened his fingers and blinked his vision clear. A dried leaf of golden ginkgo lay in his palm.
Ginkgo blessed altar, never illness-fraught.
What a cruel mockery of fate. Not two days ago, he had laid ginkgo in Ichigo's hair with whisper and prayer for good health and long life. Grimmjow could neither look at the leaf nor discard it; he closed his fist and clasped Ichigo to his chest. The stench of blood loomed heavy and dark. If only he had the power to preserve this moment. If he held just tightly enough, if he wished just ardently enough, then perhaps there was a power that could keep Ichigo here with him.
Do not go. Grimmjow closed his eyes. Do not leave.
"Crown of ginkgo…" whispered Ichigo.
Grimmjow could not speak, and Ichigo did not finish the verse. At last the flow of his blood had slowed. Grimmjow dropped the blood-sodden cloth and bowed his head in Ichigo's hair.
He tasted salt and copper.
...
In the field where Ichigo had taught him jinzen lay a sunny spot upon a gentle hill. The stream flowed within hearing distance, and in summer strawberries grew thick and heavy with fruit on the slope.
Here Grimmjow chose for Ichigo's final resting place.
It was not the ornate tomb of white stone with pearl and gold inlay some insisted more befitting a god. But it was quiet, close to Grimmjow's home and the places where he remembered Ichigo's most joyous smiles. Standing upon this hill, across the distance in clear sight was the village center, and in the opposite direction was the sea.
"His Lord would have liked it here, I think."
Orihime laid her bouquet beneath the rosewood marker. Magnolia and peonies bloomed earlier than most flowers, but even before the first thaw of spring, Grimmjow had glimpsed Orihime, bundled in warm cloaks, paying her respects here all through the winter. The snow along this path had often been tracked with her small footprints.
"He did not seem the sort of person who would have liked a grand tomb."
She was bolder with Grimmjow these days, for he no longer growled at the sight of her. Ichigo had been fond of her after all.
Grimmjow did not look at her. "He was not," he agreed.
She hesitated.
"Lord Jaegerjaquez, I…I hope you are well. If you have need of anything, or if you wish to share a meal in company…you are always welcome at our door."
Grimmjow said nothing.
Orihime did not press for an answer. She knelt before the marker, whispered a prayer or blessing Grimmjow did not care to hear, and took her leave.
Wind combed through the field, and long grass rippled like waves. Sprays of sea-blue wildflowers grew thick over the burial site. If not for the marker, this place would have appeared not out of the ordinary. Grimmjow ran his fingers over the polished, sun-warmed marker. A familiar ache began in his chest, too sharp for a wound that had been scabbing all winter. His breath stuttered in his throat.
A rumbling chuff came from beside him. Grimmjow reached out and buried his other hand in Pantera's thick fur. He closed his eyes.
Pantera's grief was his own.
...
The night sky held no wonder.
Grimmjow no longer gazed upon the stars. There was nothing there worth his reverence or awe.
It had been five months since he had laid Ichigo to rest. Grimmjow spoke to no one but Pantera in moments when the tides of his heart swelled too high to bear. To his people, the color of his robes said all that needed to be said.
Grimmjow had worn white on two occasions before for the passing of his mother and father. And now again for the third time, the color of mourning made its home in his wardrobe.
He had seen Shirosaki just once since that terrible night.
Four days after the burial rites, on a moonless night shunned by sleep, Grimmjow had found the white demon before the grave marker bent on one knee. With Ichigo's final command resonant in his mind, he had hesitated in drawing his sword, and Shirosaki spoke without turning:
"Do you know how to kill a god?" the demon had said. "You pierce him twice. Saketsu, the binding chain; Hakusui, the soul sleep. Pierced through one, he will never recover. Through both, and he will die in an instant."
Later, as he had lain awake in bed turning those words over and over in his head, Grimmjow understood.
Aizen had been the first strike, the wound in Ichigo's chest that would not heal. And with Seireitei's judgment looming and inevitable, Ichigo had allowed Shirosaki to be the second.
Understanding did not dull the ache.
He saw Ichigo in all things: in the ginkgo trees flourishing anew with green as the days grew warm and long, in the reflection of steel when he oiled and cleaned Pantera's blade. He heard the echo of Ichigo's laughter on Raahl's night of dance, and turned so swiftly Orihime startled and asked if he was well.
Some believed ghosts were not the dead lingering on but desperate fantasies of those bereaved. Grimmjow imagined Ichigo's presence all around him.
After all, being haunted was preferable to being left behind.
...
Grimmjow worshipped no gods.
With spiteful heart, he left his hair long during Raahl and dared the gods to strike him for doing so. He listened to the ballads on the third night of the festival, but when the bards turned their songs to the tale of thrice-broken Zangetsu, he rose from his seat before the bonfire and returned home.
His path took him once more to Ichigo's grave.
In the valley below, the lights and festivities of the town center continued on, too distant to warm, too muted to hear. Alone in the black maw of night, Grimmjow stood a world apart. He stood there a long moment and breathed deep the sweetness of spring evening.
The air shifted.
Grimmjow frowned; he moved a hand to Pantera's hilt, and in the next breath, he turned and swung the blade in the same motion.
A white sword met his. Shirosaki's face was slack, his eyes wide behind his blade for a moment too fleeting to immortalize. Grimmjow's resolve faltered. Shirosaki pushed him off.
"You dare aim your blade at me," he hissed.
"I dare." Belly full of fire, Grimmjow raised his chin and sneered. He pointed Pantera at Shirosaki's chest like a declaration. "And I know where I aim. Saketsu, the binding chain; Hakusui, the soul sleep."
Shirosaki regarded him as though seeing him for the first time. "Insolent creature," he said, but his tongue lacked bite. He sheathed his sword.
White-skinned, white-haired, white-robed—Shirosaki had Ichigo's face, but stripped of warmth and the affection Ichigo had reserved for Grimmjow. He looked so like Ichigo, and yet, not like him at all. The sight of him inspired pain.
"Why are you here?"
Shirosaki ignored him. He stepped past Grimmjow towards the grave marker and stood before it. He said nothing, did nothing, but at his sides hands curled to fists. When at last he turned to Grimmjow again, his face was taut.
He unshouldered a long slender bundle from his back and held it close to his chest before holding it out.
Grimmjow stared a moment until he realized he was meant to take it. It was wrapped in linen, tied with string, and from the weight of it in his hands and the rigid length of the object within, it could only be a sword.
Grimmjow looked from the bundle to Shirosaki whose eyes were hard. "What is this?"
Shirosaki did not answer, so he pulled loose the ties and uncovered the wrapping. On a humble bed of white linen, Ichigo's black sword lay gleaming whole and perfect as it ever was, unbroken as though that terrible battle with Aizen had never happened.
A stone caught in Grimmjow's throat. Ichigo's sword. As precious to Ichigo as Pantera was to Grimmjow.
"It is yours now."
Grimmjow nearly dropped it. "What?"
Shirosaki's stare weighed on Grimmjow's shoulders like a mountain. "King commanded it be reforged and bequeathed to you."
Ichigo had left his sword to him.
The weight of it all crushed Grimmjow to his knees. He curled over the precious gift in his arms. His sword, his blood, his innocence, his life—was there anything Ichigo had not given to Grimmjow?
"Take it back," he said to Shirosaki. "I do not want this. I want…"
He faltered, but Shirosaki understood.
He wanted the same.
...
Shirosaki lingered.
He offered no privacy, silent and pitiless as Grimmjow knelt on hands and knees in front of Ichigo's grave, clutching the sword to his chest as though it might make him whole again.
What did this mean?
The sword was Ichigo's, but the sword was Zangetsu, whom Ichigo had named Shirosaki. Grimmjow turned to look at the demon who possessed Ichigo's fearsome strength and will, but none of his compassion or restraint. Shirosaki stood like a sculpture of white marble beneath the moon's gleam, his strange golden eyes keen and hard.
"Pray for my king's victory," Shirosaki had once said to him. "For absent him, I am a caged beast freed. Absent him, I am death."
Ichigo had not left him the sword out of sentiment alone. He had planned past his own death and foreseen the danger Shirosaki posed to this race of men he so loved. In bequeathing his sword to Grimmjow, Ichigo had bound Shirosaki to him also.
Shirosaki caught his stare and read there his realization and wonder. His jaw tightened. "You are not my master."
Grimmjow rose. "I am not." Why should he be? Ichigo had been wrong about men, after all. They were not worth saving; they were not worth his blood or his life—not by far. Ichigo should have left them all to Aizen. Grimmjow's blood ran hot but he did not weep. He had not wept since Ichigo's final night, for what were one man's tears worth in the loss of heaven's most magnificent star? "Go. Savage this earth, if that is what you intend. It is no less than we deserve."
Perhaps Shirosaki should start with the western nation, he suggested, for their foolishness in falling prey to Aizen's seduction which had started this all.
"I already have."
Grimmjow looked up.
"I went to the western lands. For each one I killed, I spared another," said Shirosaki, and his bloodless face, white like bone, was both terrible and beautiful in its cruelty.
There was no need to ask; Shirosaki did not mean the soldiers alone. He had slain men, women, and children also.
But only half.
"You should have slain them all." Bitterness and vengeance were poisons, said men wiser than Grimmjow. He drank deep of both.
Shirosaki smiled most unpleasant. "Perhaps it was not me King should have worried of." He turned and cast Grimmjow a final glance over his shoulder. "Shed the mourning white," he said. "It does not suit a creature like you."
He was gone.
...
Grimmjow carried Pantera on his hip and Zangetsu on his back.
He no longer wore white. Though Ichigo lingered in his thoughts and walked often in his dreams, Grimmjow turned forward to his work ahead.
His people rebuilt. Though the war was fresh in all memories and most families still grieved for lives and homes lost, they were glad and grateful to remake their lives in the memory of peacetime.
Some days, when Grimmjow walked through the town market amidst people buying and selling their wares, when he glimpsed children playing in the sea or mock fighting on the training fields, he was taken back to his youth—before the war, before the passing of his mother and father, before a nameless ryoka stumbled into his camp at night—when the world had been ordinary and his sword bloodless. Grimmjow had gone to war and returned, and all had come back around to where it had begun. The earth felt as though unchanged.
Heaven was not.
Where the constellation of the great sword once reigned was now only pitch black night. It was a terrible void, emptier than empty, that would never again feel right.
Grimmjow had changed also.
He noticed first when, on a night beset with anger close to madness, he raised Pantera's blade to Shirosaki and cut across his shoulder a thin red line which spilled stark and shocking over the demon's white robes.
Grimmjow nearly fell over himself.
He had drawn blood from a god.
Shirosaki touched the wound, contemplating the sight of his own blood, then smirked and challenged him, "Do it again."
This time, Grimmjow ended on the ground with eye swelling shut, white bone piercing out his arm, and Pantera laying out of reach. Shirosaki stared down the length of his white blade with its point pressed in the hollow of Grimmjow's throat and laughed. "Impale yourself on this and spare me the sight of you."
Grimmjow snarled and nearly cut his palm in two swatting the blade away.
Shirosaki returned three days later and found him near healed.
Sneering, he seized Grimmjow by the throat and crushed him to the earth. The potent swell of his power pressed down on Grimmjow from all sides, filling his lungs and squeezing his chest like a snake. With a wild light in his eyes, Shirosaki loomed above as though he meant to crush Grimmjow with the force of his power alone. And yet, Grimmjow did not labor to breathe. His heart did not stop. He glared up at the white demon with his one eye not pressed into the dirt, mouth frothing with rage and fire.
"So, King left you with more than just his sword."
Shirosaki let him up. His laugh echoed cold and joyless, and he turned towards Ichigo's grave upon the hill.
"King!" he shouted, and at the mad pitch of his voice, Grimmjow laid a hand over Pantera's hilt. "Was this your will?"
He climbed the hill, frenzied, and Grimmjow followed. Whatever Shirosaki intended in his madness, Grimmjow would not allow him to desecrate Ichigo's resting place.
At the top of the hill, the demon struck his white blade into the ground and dropped to hands and knees before the rosewood marker. He beat his fists down and shouted at the earth as though Ichigo might hear him—
"Was this what you wanted? Was this all you could conjure in your holy wisdom?"
Grimmjow stood aside and wavered between stepping back and advancing forth as Shirosaki railed his toothless fury.
"Fool! Weakling! Was this what I labored for? All the blood we shed, King, you and I together, for this?" He whipped back around on Grimmjow. "Do you even know what he gave you?"
Grimmjow stood tall, mud on his face and in his hair but pride in his shoulders thrown back. Ichigo's blessing in the shrine whispered ghostlike across his lips. "Everything."
Shirosaki laughed. He bowed, curled over the grassy mound where lay the remains of his once-master, and broke.
"Yes," he whispered. "He gave you everything."
...
Shirosaki continued to return.
His visits left Grimmjow bruised and bleeding. Grimmjow struck back where he could and spat cursing and hissing where he could not. But he did not demand Shirosaki to stop. He did not want him to. For every cut and broken bone, the pain of Ichigo's absence waned for a brief moment, just enough for Grimmjow to continue breathing without him.
This was atonement. Whatever punishment Shirosaki heaped upon him, Grimmjow would take, for Ichigo had suffered worse.
Perhaps it was the same for Shirosaki.
On a sweltering summer day, he succeeded in cutting Shirosaki again.
Stunned into stillness, Grimmjow stared at Pantera's blade, at the impossible blood staining its edge, but Shirosaki hardened his face and demanded, "Again."
Grimmjow did not land another blow that day, but at the end of it as he lay bleeding and battered in the dirt with Shirosaki standing above, he understood at last the purpose of these visits.
"You are training me."
Shirosaki was quiet and still, gaze cast beyond the hills as though his mind was very far away. Perhaps he had not heard. Perhaps he had heard but did not intend to humor Grimmjow's bold remark with an answer. As Grimmjow pulled himself upright, leaning on Pantera like a cane, Shirosaki turned and looked down upon him at last.
"King did not give you his power for you to sit idle with it." He sheathed his sword. "I pushed him to be stronger, faster, greater, to wield his true power and use it to make his will known. Now I do the same to you."
Grimmjow's chest pulled tight. "Why?"
He should have known the answer, for what else could compel this strange, vicious creature to swallow disdain for Grimmjow and instruct him in Ichigo's image?
"It is what King would have wanted."
...
Shirosaki painted his lessons in florid bruises and broken bones, but his words cut deeper still.
"You have his sword and his power, but not his strength," he sneered. Grimmjow lay in the dirt with Shirosaki's sword to his neck. The ground here may as well have the imprint of his prone body for how often their days ended like this.
He healed quickly these days. Ichigo's gift had given him power and endurance unknown to men in living memory, yet Grimmjow did not know what Ichigo had intended him to do with it.
"I hope it aids you in the greatness you are meant for, Grimmjow."
There was yet one wound which did not heal. A dried ginkgo leaf lay in a drawer Grimmjow did not open.
There were few to offer him solace, and none to give him wisdom.
Shirosaki came closest.
"I do not know what King gave you his power for," he said when Grimmjow asked. "Why do you puzzle over this? Have you no will of your own?"
Grimmjow did, but these were not things which required a god's sword or his power. The title of warlord conferred more than just military power; in times of peace, Grimmjow wielded civil authority also. With the turn of the seasons, Grimmjow departed the village of his birth once more with ten score soldiers under his command. These were but a small fraction of the army he had led the previous year, but the war was over, and most had been released from duty. Those who remained followed Grimmjow in a task less familiar and less comfortable to him than warfare: the rebuilding of his ravaged homeland.
They travelled first inland, for the towns and villages furthest from the coast had suffered greatest in the war. His soldiers exchanged their bows and swords for saws and hammers to aid in the rebuilding of homes and towns, and Grimmjow sweated alongside them.
This was labor most strange to him. Wherever he went, the people bowed and thanked him, sometimes with hot food and a temporary bed, sometimes with open tears and embraces. Their tongues knew his name and his deeds, and their eyes lingered on the black sword worn across his back. Though Grimmjow had told no one of Ichigo's final gift to him, rumors guessed the truth nonetheless.
Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, the man touched by Kenpachi, they whispered. But touched also by the red star of Zangetsu. Ichigo's chosen warrior and the inheritor of Zangetsu.
Shirosaki found him no matter where he travelled, and it was against him Grimmjow's strength was tested.
He was an exacting teacher.
Grimmjow was never without wounds half-healed and aching in reminder of his lessons. His men took notice and on occasion glimpsed Shirosaki himself, but Shirosaki did not entertain the presence of other humans and preferred to make himself known when Grimmjow was alone.
Shirosaki's lessons bore fruit. Grimmjow no longer sparred with other men. Against Shirosaki, his endurance grew and his strength hardened until he could stand on his two feet long enough to see Shirosaki's breath ragged and his brow crowned with sweat.
He still ended in the dirt every time.
From town to town Grimmjow went, and his company of men followed. Overseeing the restoration of his homeland was duty, but it was not duty alone which compelled him in this task. With every house rebuilt, every child's careless laugh and every meal savored in good company, Grimmjow tried to see through Ichigo's eyes.
Seven years the boy-god had wandered these lands before finding Grimmjow. What had he seen, what had he witnessed and lived to find worth dying for? Never once had Ichigo regretted his choice. Was this race of men truly worth so much?
Grimmjow wished Ichigo had left him his certainty in this also.
The following spring, Grimmjow and his men rested in a prosperous town along the northern coast. The ruling family here was named Shiba, and they had claimed sovereignty over this stretch of coast since the old days. The lord and lady of the house invited Grimmjow to share their roof. They had three children but only two of their own blood.
The third and eldest child was a boy, black-haired with long lashes, and his little face seized Grimmjow's speech and breath both.
"Who was that?" Grimmjow demanded when the boy had gone, run off to play with his brother in the gentle ocean waves below.
"Our eldest son," said Lady Shiba. She poured Grimmjow another cup of fragrant rose tea. "He does not have a name, but he is our little seabird."
"What?"
The seabird was wú míng, Lady Shiba explained. A foundling child with no name, discovered one day eight years ago toddling in the shallows. He had come at a time of grieving, a little miracle most precious to Lord and Lady Shiba whom the healers had called barren. In the old days, children wú míng were given names by the gods. But now the gods were gone, so the boy would choose his own name one day when he was old enough to hold a sword.
"It is strange," she laughed. "Less than a year after he came to us, I was with child. My husband is a superstitious man. He believes our seabird a most uncommon blessing."
From Lord Shiba, Grimmjow learned more.
"These shores were once treacherous," he told the warlord. "There were great storms which pulled boats under. When I was a boy, there was no profession more dangerous than being a fisherman. After we found our seabird, the seas calmed. We have lost no more boats. And now…we permit even small children to play in the waves."
He turned to Grimmjow and smiled. "My wife says you took great interest when you saw him this morning. The way he came to us was strange, but what curiosity did you find in my son, Lord Jaegerjaquez?"
Grimmjow gave a deflecting answer, and Lord Shiba did not press.
The boy resembled Ichigo.
At second glance, the differences were clear. The boy's eyes were green. His hair was black, its texture rougher than Ichigo's had been, and his lips were fuller. He was only a child with a passing resemblance to a departed god.
Grimmjow searched for Ichigo in places he was not.
At sunset, he sensed Shirosaki's presence, but the white demon did not appear for him. Instead, Grimmjow sighted him down by the shoreline, kneeling before the eldest Shiba child and clasping his little hand before the sun-swallowing sea.
With a shout, Grimmjow hurried down the shore with Lord and Lady Shiba close behind, for Shirosaki was cruel, and his vicious nature did not spare children.
But the seabird was unharmed. Lord and Lady Shiba knew at once what Shirosaki was, and they hastened to kneel as the god rose.
"Lord, please forgive our son. He is young and does not know the ways of worship—"
"His name is Kaien." Shirosaki released the boy who did not flee from him. "And he is ready for a sword."
...
Kaien.
It was said in the old days before the gods were stars, the god Kaien had so loved mortal men he chose to live amongst them. This love had been his ruin, and his final resting place was near the sea whose waves he once tamed.
Kaien was Ichigo's kin through his father, and they had always borne strong resemblance to each other, said Shirosaki. He had not named the Shiba child for Kaien. No. The boy was Kaien.
"What does this mean?" Grimmjow demanded.
They sat shoulder to shoulder, a breath apart with gazes cast out to sea. Waves glistened beneath a silver coin moon. At their back, the last light blew out in the Shiba house. The Lord and Lady of the house had already put their children to bed and turned to sleep themselves. All was dark but for the moon, the sea, and the wretched stars.
"Kaien lives again."
Grimmjow sank onto his back in the grass. Above, the stars spun, and his mind spun with them. He felt like one of the small fishing boats tossed about at sea by waves untamed. It was too much to hope, too much to wish for. But if Kaien could live again…
"Ichigo can too," he whispered.
Shirosaki bent over, and the twist of his face fell between anguish and hope. Grimmjow felt it as his own. The currents of Shirosaki's heart were deep as the sea and equally mysterious. But now at times Grimmjow could see into the shallows when the tide was low by Shirosaki's allowance. He rose.
"We will find him."
Shirosaki's strange gold eyes snapped up.
"We can," said Grimmjow. "If Ichigo lives again, we will find him."
At his side, a rumbling purr. Grimmjow buried his fingers in Pantera's fur. The beast's solid presence soothed his heart, and his keen approval hardened his resolve. They would find Ichigo—they would move heaven and earth, turn this world inside out or burn it all down—but they would find him.
"He will remember nothing," whispered Shirosaki.
"Then we will remember for him. We can tell him all, one day."
Shirosaki swallowed. Pantera touched him with his nose, and he laid a hand on the beast's head with a trembling sigh. He nodded slowly. "We will find him."
Grimmjow unshouldered the sacred black sword at his back and held it in his hands. It weighed like a mountain. "One day, I will return to him this sword."
"And until then?"
Grimmjow looked out into the open waters and sensed the world opening before him wide and yawning. He thought back to a night like this that felt very long ago now, a night in a different place, in different company. He had told Ichigo what he wished for most—Grimmjow looked upon Pantera at his side with solemn pride—and Ichigo in turn had confided his most desperate wish.
"I will make the stars fall."
Grimmjow clasped the hilt of the black sword in his palm, and its blade sang to his blood. The stars sat in their lofty thrones above, unchanged through all the turmoil of these past years, through Ichigo's sacrifice, through Grimmjow's grief. They had no right to be so unmoved. They had no right to feel nothing.
"I will do this," he swore. "Ichigo hated what his people have become. He wished for the stars to fall."
"You will do this?" asked Shirosaki. "You, alone against the gods?"
"I am not alone." Pantera's purr rumbled soundless beneath his hand. "I have my sword. I have an army. And I have you."
"Do you?"
"I do." Grimmjow turned to him then and held the black sword between them. "Ichigo left his power and his sword to me. And you, Zangetsu, have not been training me to fight against men."
Shirosaki's smile curled slow and vicious. He clasped a hand over the hilt, fingers encircling Grimmjow's, and looked upon him anew. "So you have found your will."
Grimmjow's will was a promise to the stars:
One day, the stars would fall. They would rain unto this earth, mere embers of what they had once been, and walk in the mud amongst those forgotten. The evening sky would fall dark and empty, and the moon would rest alone. As certain as the turn of seasons, Grimmjow would see this done.
The night was his witness.
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I hope you have enjoyed The Stars Rained Down Like Embers.
While writing this I've often kept the comments page open so I could look back when I got stuck or frustrated and read all the encouragement people left me. To future readers who stumble upon this at some point, even if the story's been wrapped up already, I will always come back to read new comments.
Update 12/10/21: This completed story is now available as a (nonprofit) printed book! Please see my twitter or tumblr for more info (my username on those platforms is also Copperscript)
One story has come to an end, but I've already started others. My new stories are being updated on AO3, under the same username. Come join me there! :)
-Copperscript